Microsoft is under fire this week over a patent it was granted thats been dubbed the avoid ghetto feature for GPS devices. The new feature is meant to help pedestrians avoid unsafe neighbourhoods, bad weather and difficult terrain by taking information from maps, weather reports, crime statistics and demographics, and creating directions that, according to the patent, take “the user through neighbourhoods with violent crime statics below a certain threshold.
The word guetto doesn’t actually appear anywhere in Microsoft’s Pedestrian Route Production patent, but a slew of headlines touting the incendiary avoid ghetto nickname have generated outrage. Some say the feature is racist, while others say it’s simply the next step in GPS technology.